Three United Airlines passengers who attempted to save the life of a dying man on a flight last week did so knowing their fellow flier might have had symptoms of COVID-19.
“I knew the risks involved in performing CPR on someone that potentially has COVID, but I made the choice to do so anyways,” Tony Aldapa said, according to the New York Post. “Knowing I had the knowledge, training and experience to help out, I could not have sat idly by and watched someone die.”
Aldapa, an EMT by trade, said he worked on the man with two other passengers for over an hour before the Orlando-to-Los Angeles flight made an emergency landing in New Orleans. The man later died at a New Orleans hospital.
Aldapa said he and the other two passengers rotated CPR duties between performing chest compressions on the man and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation through a compressible oxygen bag attached to a mask. Aldapa said he spoke with the passenger’s wife, who admitted her husband was scheduled to get a COVID-19 test done in Los Angeles after losing his sense of taste and smell. The man reportedly told the airline before boarding that he had no virus-related symptoms.
“I spent the remainder of the flight covered in my own sweat and in that man’s urine,” Aldapa said.
Aldapa said he now feels like he has virus-related symptoms.
“Essentially I just feel like I got hit by a train,” he told CBS LA. “I had a cough, my whole body still hurt, I had a headache.”
